Carl Icahn Says Of His Lionsgate Sale: “You Can't Win 'Em All”

The billionaire activist investor would have been $345M richer if he had held on to his Lionsgate stock — which closed today at $14.22 per share — instead of selling the bulk of his holdings late last year for about $7 per share. At one point he owned 33% of Lionsgate. But he shrugged off his miscall in an interview this afternoon on CNBC. “You can’t win ’em all,” he said. “I sent those guys an email congratulating them” following Lionsgate’s success this weekend with The Hunger Games. “You know, it’s very hard to pick stocks, but it’s impossible to pick the right movie. When it was $7 — unless Lionsgate had that big hit — there would be problems, I thought. Obviously we were wrong.” No need to feel sorry for Icahn. His portfolio appreciated 35% last year. “We are pretty proud of our performance,” he says. But if he had held on to Lionsgate, it would have been up 37%, he says. The stock has appreciated 70.9% since the end of 2011.